The great doors of the Eastern Kingdom yielded with a deep sound when Éon pushed.
They did not creak.
They did not resist.
They simply moved, as if recognizing the weight of the gesture.
The interior of the castle received him in silence.
The air was colder inside, too still—as if it had been waiting.
The exterior light advanced only a few steps across the stone floor before beginning to lose strength, swallowed by tall columns and deep arches that upheld an unseen ceiling.
Éon entered.
He stopped before moving on.
He turned his face, not in search of anything visible—but obeying a sudden sensation, displaced enough to be more than ordinary instinct.
Far beyond the walls, crossing courtyards, outer corridors, and layers of stone that separated him from the heart of the territory, something felt off-axis.
He could not see it.
Still, the world in that direction was… wrong.
The rain falling in the distance seemed to lose coherence at some invisible point—as if space itself, far away, had given way by a minimal fraction.
It was not an observable phenomenon.
It was a lack of alignment that shadows recognized without needing image.
No impact.
No clear presence.
Just a deviation.
Éon drew a deep breath.
The shadows around him did not react.
That, in itself, was strange.
He took another step into the castle.
The external light retreated as he advanced, and the silent mass of the fortress closed around him—ancient stone, deep corridors, shadows that did not move, only remained.
Behind him, the doors began to close.
Slow.
Without ceremony.
The sound was low, continuous, like a decision made long ago and only now concluded.
The opening narrowed.
The brightness faded.
The outside world ceased to exist.
The doors met with a contained impact.
The sound died too quickly between the walls.
Éon remained still for one extra moment.
Then he moved on.
The darkness of the castle did not receive him as an enemy—it simply absorbed him.
And, somewhere too distant to be seen, too ancient to be ignored, something that should not have responded… already had.
Éon advanced.
The darkness of the castle receded, revealing structures that still remembered movement.
The corridor was wide, supported by columns marked with old fractures—some hastily sealed, others left open like scars that were never treated.
The floor was not covered in untouched dust.
There were marks.
Irregular grooves, deep gashes, areas where stone had been vitrified by excessive heat or split by direct impact.
This was not abandonment—it was what remained after something had been used to its limit… and broken.
The air carried residue.
Not of mold.
Of expended energy.
Like a place that, for a long time, had operated beyond what it could bear—until it was forced to stop.
Éon walked without haste.
His steps echoed, but the sound did not spread freely; it was absorbed by inactive mechanisms, by broken conduits, by symbols forcibly erased from the walls.
In some places, fragments of ancient inscriptions still resisted, incomplete, like sentences cut off mid-thought.
Then he stopped.
The second door rose before him.
It was not monumental.
It was precise.
Built for repeated use, not ceremony.
The edges were worn, polished by the repeated touch of hands that knew exactly when and why to cross it.
Marks of containment were still visible—broken seals, forced fittings, rails thrown out of alignment by excessive use or by an opening that should not have happened the last time.
This door did not protect the kingdom.
It protected the core.
Éon rested his hand on the surface.
The stone answered.
Not with resistance—with delayed recognition.
A weak pulse ran through the structure, like the last reflex of a system that had once been fully active, but now only remembered how it felt to function.
He pushed.
The internal mechanism groaned.
The door moved with uneven effort, like something not meant to be opened in that state—but that still obeyed.
The space beyond was not empty.
It was concentrated.
The darkness inside was not the absence of light, but its accumulation—compressed, sustained by layers of containment that were no longer complete.
The air did not rush outward.
It stayed where it was, dense, immobile, as if awaiting permission.
Éon took a step.
Then another.
Behind him, the door began to close.
Not abruptly.
But with the tired weight of something that had already been forced open once… and remembered it.
The sound of stone meeting stone was low, deep, final.
The outer castle ceased to exist for Éon.
What remained was only the wounded heart of that place—and the confrontation that could no longer be delayed.
At a raised point in the darkness, two eyes opened.
Scarlet-red.
They did not glow.
They cut.
The space around them did not react with sound or light—it reacted with weight.
The air lost mobility.
Pressure accumulated as if something had taken possession of the environment simply by being awake.
Nothing else was visible.
No complete silhouette.
No defined form.
Only the eyes.
Fixed. Assessing.
The rhythm of breathing in the space changed before any movement occurred.
A slow scenting crossed the air—not loud, not exaggerated.
Precise.
Directed.
Fingers, still hidden, tapped once.
Then stopped.
The presence leaned slightly forward.
When the voice emerged, it did not rise.
It did not need to.
"I smell Níðhöggr on you."
Pause.
Long enough for instinct to understand the warning.
"But you are not born of his flesh."
Silence.
"Tell me where he is."
There was no threat in the question.
There was command.
And the absolute certainty that, spoken or not, the outcome was already in motion.
The sound of the katana leaving its sheath echoed low through the compressed space.
No challenge.
No haste.
When Éon spoke, there was no hurry.
"I did not come here to speak."
The presence straightened.
The sound was low—bones adjusting, weight shifting axis.
The air was scented again.
Pause.
"Then words have already failed."
Silence.
Then the floor answered his first step.
The darkness did not break.
It yielded.
Éon vanished from where he stood—not in visible speed, but in suppression of presence.
The air was cut before the sound.
The first light in the chamber was born when the katana was already in motion.
A short arc.
Precise.
The blade met something solid.
Sparks exploded—brief, violent—lighting the hall for a single instant.
Claws.
The figure had dropped its body at the exact moment of the advance, posture low, spine flexed like a compressed spring.
The impact did not push him back—it anchored him.
The sound was dry.
Metal against densified living matter.
The blade slid.
It did not enter.
The figure rotated in the same flow, using contact as guidance.
His body spun close to the ground, hands touching stone just enough to redefine axis.
Silent.
Lethal.
The counterattack came from below upward.
Claws tore through the void where Éon's abdomen had been an instant before.
Éon was no longer there.
He had yielded the space at impact, twisting his torso and letting the strike pass by a minimal deviation—absolute economy.
The rear foot sank, the front pivoted, and the katana returned in a straight line.
Another clash.
More sparks.
The hall blinked again, revealing bodies pressed together, too close for a wide cut.
The figure drove his full weight forward, shoulder crushing, trying to break structure through contact.
Éon allowed it.
And redirected.
His arm slid along the figure's torso, hand touching the opponent's elbow for a fragment of a second—Silat—breaking the joint's axis at the exact moment of the advance.
The blade dropped short, seeking the tendon.
The figure felt it.
And did not retreat.
The leg absorbed the damage, muscles compacting.
Scarlet energy surged inward, sealing the tear before the cut could finish its work.
His body exploded forward.
Not a jump.
A predatory fall.
He collided with Éon like a living battering ram, gripping the torso, crushing ribs in the embrace.
The floor cracked under the impact as both slid.
Éon slammed his shoulder into a stone column.
The impact stole his air.
Even so, the blade rose.
The arm was caught.
Claws closed around the wrist—focused pressure—bones grinding, blood trying to flee from the compressed point.
In the dark, only the sound of breathing.
Short.
Controlled.
The pressure on the wrist increased.
Not all at once.
In short pulses.
Rhythmic.
As if the grip were testing resistance before deciding where to break.
Éon felt his body's alignment begin to give.
The shoulder was off-axis.
The ribs compressed too much for a full breath.
The ground beneath his feet no longer offered a clear read—the stone vibrated, charged by a force that did not come from outside, but passed through.
The other adjusted his base.
Very little.
Enough.
His torso rotated as a block, without opening guard.
The arm that trapped the katana pulled Éon inward—not as a grapple, but as forced alignment.
Too close.
Space vanished.
Éon realized the vector too late.
The knee rose short.
Not to strike.
To anchor.
The impact came immediately after.
A shoulder strike, compact, thrown with the entire body behind it—pure pankration, pressure concentrated at a point impossible to absorb.
The sound came first.
A dry, internal crack.
Then the air fled his lungs, ripped out in a single blow.
The ribs did not break—they yielded, transmitting the impact inward.
Contact broke.
Éon lost the ground.
His body was thrown.
The lateral arch of the hall entered his field of vision as a shape too pale in the dark—ancient columns, stone polished by time, and beyond them, open night.
The impact against the structure came next.
Violent.
Direct.
Stone shattered into splinters, not collapse.
A tall stained-glass window gave way with a muffled snap, opening a path to the exterior.
Éon went through.
The sound of rain rushed in all at once.
Cold.
Heavy.
The body left the hall and met emptiness for a second before crashing into the side courtyard, rolling over wet stone, feeling water mix with the hot blood now escaping from the corner of his mouth.
He stopped on his knees.
Katana still in hand.
Breath short.
Painful.
Éon lifted his face slowly.
Above him, in the irregular opening of the structure, the darkness of the hall remained intact—too dense to be mere shadow.
Something was repositioning inside.
Heavy.
Stable.
The rain avoided that point for an almost imperceptible instant.
The confrontation was not over.
It had only changed terrain.